External Drive for both PC and G4

Hi-I am new to this, so please explain in very simple terms.
I need to get an external hard drive (looked at Maxtor& seagate so far. Need 300-500 GB. I am in Fashion deisgn and need to downoad programs off the main frame at work. I will do this through my PC at work. Then, I want to be able to take my drive home and use it for both my Gateway laptop and my G4.
I have gotten a hundred different explanations of how to make it work or it won't.
Basically, will a Maxtor one touch III or Seagate free agent Pro work. I have been told that they are both formatted in Ntfs and need to be changed to FAT32, but FAT runs very
Slowly, but this will allow me to use it with both the PC and G4. Others have said that some units already come formatted in FAT. Then I read somewhere on apple support that there is a third type of formatting, HT something, but will this work with both computers.
I like the Seagate because it has a 5 year warranty.
Also, is firewire 800 worth the upcost, is it that much faster?
I also read from apple forums that you need to set up an internal network to use the 2 computers, is that correct? I am not very computer knowledgeable and this seems like a Big deal.
Any recommndations on specific external drive units that work well with both pc and g4 is appreciated.
Thanks

Any external Firewire/USB2 hard drive will work but you have to format the drive as FAT32 using Disk Utility if you want to be able to plug it directly to both a Mac and a PC. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB, so it is not ideal for transporting, say digital movie footage.
If you know how to network your Mac and PC together, then you could just format the hard drive as NTFS, the standard file system for Windows computers, and share it from the Windows PC.
If you right-click a folder in Windows you can bring up its Properties, select the Sharing tab and there you can easily share the entire contents of that folder on the network. You can share an entire hard drive in the same way.
I would play around with this first on your Gateway laptop till you are confident that you are able to transfer files between your Mac and PC.
You connect your two computers using an ethernet cable. Depending on the network interface cards in your computers, you may be able to connect them directly to one another. Otherwise you will need a network device switch, more popularly known as a network "hub".

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Want to partition a new External Hard drive for both pc and mac

Hello!
I am going to partition a new Seagate external hard drive for both my pc and mac. What format do I choose for the PC partition? MS-DOS (FAT), ExFAT, or Free Space.
Thank you!
Nikki

If I may suggest:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After formatting has completed select the main entry for the new drive (mfgr.'s ID) then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Click on the large partition rectangle then click on the Add [+] button. The partition should divide into two equal volumes. Resize as you prefer. Select the second or bottom volume to use on the PC. Set the format type to ExFat, then click on the Apply button. Wait for the two volumes to finish mounting on the Desktop.

External hard drive for both windows and mac

hello, all - just bought a western digital 500gb my book premium edition external hard drive. will be using for both pc and macbook, not necessarily to share files (though i may on occasion), but rather as a backup. been researching the discussion boards and concluded that i should use it as pre-formatted fat32. few questions...
1) if i do use to share files, from what i understand i will be able to read windows files with my mac but i can't read mac files with windows (unless i have macdrive installed). is this correct?
2) since mac can read/write to fat 32, is it necessary to partition the drives and keep the files separated? i talked to a "computer guy" earlier today and he said i should consider having two completely separate external hard drives as having files from two different operating systems on the same drive could cause major problems for both... i didn't really believe him.
3) i have seen different posts stating using fat32 format for mac limits file size to 4gb. another post said 32gb. which is right? i have os is 10.4.7 if that makes a difference.
thanks in advance for any insight.

2 - i don't mind partitioning at all. but he strongly suggested not even partitioning but using two completely separate hard drives. yeah, the 500gb was a bit overkill, so if i can use it for both as opposed to one and buying an additional, i'd rather.
2/3 - if i partition, is it best to divide it into ntfs and hfs+? or should i keep the pc portion fat32? if the mac portion is hfs+, can i store any size file? i have videos that are anywhere from 10-20gb, and i'd like to get them off my computer and into the external drive.
thanks.

Can I use an external drive for Time Machine and storing other data?

At the moment I have one external drive, a 500gb LaCie. My internal drive is 160gb. I don't think I'll be using all 500 of those gigabytes for a while, so I want to put them to good use. Can I make a partition on this drive and use that for Time Machine, leaving the rest of the drive for my documents and other files? If so, how would I partition the drive? I'm not fluent in Disk Utility and even though I'm pretty sure I know how to do it, I don't want to screw up. Also, how big a partition would you recommend?
While we're here, I have a second question, somewhat relevant to the first. Could I move my Time Machine backups to a second drive if I wanted to? Also, if I used a big drive (say 1tb) could I use Time Machine to backup my current LaCie to a partition on that drive? Thanks in advance.

videoCWK wrote:
Does that also mean that I could back them both up on a very big drive?
Yes. Time Machine will, by default, back up all of your external drives unless you specifically exclude them.
Also, will Time Machine backups eat all my space after a lot of usage?
It depends on what you do on your Mac. If you work often with very large files (video editing, heavy photo editing, big disk images, Microsoft Entourage data file, Parallels disk image file, etc) then your backup drive could fill up very quickly.
I use my Mac mostly for e-mail, web browsing, iTunes, iPhoto, and the occasional iMovie project. I have 92 GB on my main hard drive (60 GB of which are my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, and one iMovie project.) My Time Machine backups consume 155GB on my backup drive, and that's after using Time Machine for a full year.

Format External Drive for HFS+ volume and FAT32 volume with Disk Utility

I just bought a Seagate 1tb external drive from OWC and I want to partition it into a HFS+ (journaled I assume) volume and a NTFS volume. Objective: To manually backup critical folders from my wife’s Dell (running XP) to the NTFS volume and critical Mac folders from my PowerBookG4 to the HFS volume.
My plan was to have my Mac (10.4.11) do the partitioning into a 350gb FAT32 volume for Windows and a 650gb HFS+ volume for Mac – then take the external drive to the Dell and have the Dell reformat the 350gb FAT drive to NTFS.
First question – Is this possible overall?
Second question – I haven’t been able to get my Disk Utility on my Mac to do the initial partitioning into one HFS volume and one FAT32 volume the way I want it. Is this step possible?
I’m happy to be more specific about the steps I’ve taken if the basic plan is good. From what I’ve found in some forums so far, I think I’m on the right track but am unable to execute it. Thank you.

Thank you Limnos for all your help. Last night I tried again and it worked! I’ not totally sure on what I did right but:
• Both volumes on the new ext. driver were HFS (from my last attempt the other day) so I looked into a simple erase of one partition/volume into a different format, but DU did not offer a way of erasing it into MS-DOS(FAT32). But I think I did a simple HFS erase anyway of the volume I wanted to format to FAT32. There was nothing “in” that volume because this was a new external drive but I figured it could not hurt anything.
• So then, I think I went back to Partition, locked the partition/volume that I wanted to keep in HFS+ for my Mac files, and (re)partitioned the other just erased volume to MS-DOS. I think I did it under the MBR option.
• It worked! Not sure why but my Mac recognized both volumes one as HFS, the other as FAT32. Maybe someone will find this useful some day!!
• Then, I hooked up the drive to my work Dell, the Dell found only the FAT32 drive (as expected), and I executed a short simple easy command I found on ehow.com (search for ‘convert FAT32 to NTFS’) to make that volume NTFS.
Thanks again Limnos and everyone else!

Using an External Drive for Time Machine and Other Things

I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?

rgraves wrote:
I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
Maybe. See #1 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?
It's best to put such things in their own partition. See #3 in the FAQ.
You may also want to make separate partitions for each Mac's backups, if you're backing-up either one directly (ie, not over your network). See #4 in the FAQ.

Use external drive for both Time Machine and storage for Back to My Mac

Hi all,
I have been "a Mac" now for over a year and just keep finding cool new things that make me happy I switched. The latest thing is Back to My Mac offered with my Mobile Me account. With a rather convoluted mix of PC/Mac/iOS devices to manage - best $99 I ever spent btw...
I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that I have been using with Time Machine to back up all four of my Mac computers at home. Needless to say, the 1TB is really struggling to handle the amount of data being backed up and certainly leaves no room for anything else.
What I wanted to do was to attach a larger external hard drive via a powered hub to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use it for Time Machine backups while using the internal 1TB drive with Back to My Mac so that I can have remote access to all my data from anywhere without having to leave my computer running at home all the time in order for my laptop to "see" it when I'm away. And, yes, the amount of that data far exceeds what any level of Mobile Me subscription can offer! I should also mention that the hard drive is the only USB device connected through the hub to the Time Capsule at the moment. There are no other devices that might be "getting in the way".
I'm thinking maybe all this is asking too much without the addition of a dedicated file server (Mac Mini, perhaps - not a purchase my budget wants to make).
I understand that the Time Capsule doesn't support partitions, so I bought a Western Digital 2TB Elements drive, connected it to my Macbook Pro and used Disk Utility to reformat the drive from the incompatible NTFS it shipped in to a single, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. I then made two folders on the drive, one for Time Machine backups and one for Back to My Mac remote storage/access. Great.
However, when I connected the 2TB drive to my Time Capsule I could not see it at all. Time Capsule was reporting problems in the way of a disk error. From within my Airport Utility, I could see the trouble was the external drive. The utility suggested connecting the drive to a Mac and using it's Disk Utility to troubleshoot.
I followed through, checking the disk, etc. and ended up reformatted the drive on my Macbook Pro yet again with the same specifications as before but without the folders and reconnected it to the Time Capsule. Same deal. But now, I can't even remotely connect to the Time Capsule at all. I can see the Time Capsule in the shared area of my Macbook's Finder but can not connect. The connection tries and fails even before it gets to asking me for username and password credentials.
Long story short, first of all, I suppose I would like to know if I'm asking for the impossible?
Second, if what I want to do *is* possible, what steps do I need to take to make it so?
Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions you might have.

Well, I have now reformatted/partitioned my poor WD Elements 2TB drive about a dozen times as well as restarted my 1TB Time Capsule so many times it's no wonder it's as confused as I am! <G>
Last night, at your suggestion, William, and in respect for your continued support, I tried creating two 1TB Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions on the WD external USB drive, both with GUID partition tables. Both volumes mounted to my laptop's desktop flawlessly and without issue.
Once the external drive was connected to the Time Capsule, however, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not the drive was recognized at all, reporting a problem with the disk, or, even at one point, mounting one of the two volumes but not both. <sigh>
I read somewhere on the Internet that you need to restart the Time Capsule for volumes on an external USB drive to be recognized.
So I tried that. I connected the freshly partitioned/formatted disk to the Time Capsule and restarted it. This succeed in removing the issue of reporting a nameless drive with a capacity of 0MB. It then reported the drive with its correct name but would not recognize whatever volumes in whatever partitions that particular crack at it contained with the exception of the once, as I mentioned above, when only one of two volumes mounted correctly and was listed with the right name and capacity on the Time Capusule's Setup's Disk tab.
At this point I have given up on my goal to use the external drive with Time Machine to back up my Macs or to hope I will ever be able to see its contents remotely via Back to My Mac. All I would like to do now is simply find a reason why I can't get it successfully connected and playing nice with my Time Capsule in the first place!
Any further suggestions or advice as to what steps I might take next would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.

Using a single external drive for both Time Machine AND for manual backups?

I'm new to Leopard and haven't launched Time Machine yet. I would like to use a single (500 GB) external hard drive to use with Time Machine, plus I would like to use whatever portion of this external drive Time Machine isn't using to keep some other files upon it as well--things that I can drag-and-drop manually and then trash from my computer's HD (avi files, etc., so that they don't take up space on the computer). Is there anything special I need to do with the external hard drive before I let Time Machine have its way with it, so that I can also do drag-and-drop manual file backups with it?

I’m not terribly knowledgeable, but I’ll tell you what seems to be working for me.
I also have a 500GB external drive which I had planned to use for TM for my MBP. I partitioned it (using Disk Utility) into two partitions. One I created nearly the same size as my MBP drive, the other I used for TM.
I used the smaller partition for a backup using SuperDuper prior to upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. Once I tested that I was able to boot from it and that all my programs seemed to work, I upgraded to Leopard and told it to use the other partition for TM.
It then created a TM icon for the other partition and, to the machine, it looks like a separate drive. I’ve seen no performance hit at all.
Just one man’s experience, though I haven’t yet tried to retrieve anything.
Good luck.

External drive for both Mac & Windows

I'd like to be able to do the smart thing and have a backup of the drives on my iMac. I've got Windows installed thru Boot Camp, which I access using VMware Fusion.
When I visited an Apple Store, one of the guys there told me that I could get an external hard drive, format it for each drive, and Time Machine would back it up. Having no idea how to do this, I thought I'd check here.
First of all, I'm not sure whether to get a 500GB or 1TB external HD--I have a 500GB HD on my iMac, but I'm only using roughly 100GB of it, and I have no plans to use much more than 150GB. Do I need a huge drive?
Once I have the HD, how do I format it for Mac & Windows XP separately? I know I have to partition it, but after that....what?
Next, is it possible to use Time Machine for both drives? Or will I only be able to use it for the Mac drive and manually backup XP?
After reading some other posts, I'm wondering if it's wise to update to 10.5.5. Any advice on this?
Any help/suggestions would be great--thanks!

TM will not backup a Windows partition. If you create a disk image drive with VM Fusion TM will back it up, but only the entire image file.
If you partition an external drive using GUID, then you can format one of the partitions FAT32 to use with Windows, but TM will not backup that partition nor backup anything on your main drive to that partition.
A TM backup drive or partition should be at least twice the capacity of the capacity of the drive you are backing up. If your iMac drive is 500 GBs then your backup drive's capacity should be roughly twice that size (less the space you have allocated as the Boot Camp partition.)
There's no reason not to update to 10.5.5, but if you prefer not to that's your choice. It isn't necessary although if you are going to use TM it would be wise to update because several TM bugs have been fixed by the 10.5.5 update.

I need a central hard drive for both MAC and PC to read and write files interactively. Would the time capsule work?

I've just purchased a new mac and realised that I can not write directly to my external harddrive that I use with my PC.
I need a drive that both my Mac and PC can work with. Could someone tell me what the best solution for this is??
Many thanks in advance.
Stuart

Install a tool such as the NTFS-3G drivers on the Mac.
(60694)

External drive for Time Machine and Firewire Hub

Just got a new iMac. My old iMac G5 was running 10.4.11 so no Time Machine. On the new iMac I am running 10.5.6 I find I have questions about how to go about making best use of this new facility available to me. Since my new iMac has only one firewire port (FW 800) I also need an additional port here.
My thoughts are to use an external drive connected with FW 800 as a Time Machine backup and use the (usually) extra FW 800 port to extend the FW 800 and I find I can get a dual interface drive with both FW 800 and FW 400, so I could use the FW 400 for FW 400 devices like other FW 400 drives and my video camera.
Currently I use SuperDuper to make clone backups of my HD on a weekly basis (I use 2 drives for this on a rotating basis). I plan to continue that in addition to the facility offered by Time Machine (on a separate drive).
My questions are...
Is it a good idea to use the extra FW 800 or 400 port on an external to connect other drives to use for clone BUs?
If that is a good idea...
What brand and size of drive to use for the Time Machine BU (FW 400/800 sharing)
A. Maxtor?
(I have several OneTouch II and OneTouch III that I use for clones, I have been using them for a few years without problem. I seem to remember reading about some problems with Maxtor, have I just been lucky?)
B. Newertech MiniStack v3 from OWC MacSales?
C. OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro™?
If the OWC Mercury Eltite is a good choice...
Is a 750 GB large enough?
Is it worth it to get the 1TB Enterprise 7200RPM?
Any other suggestions?
Andy

i needed 3 drives in total so went with my 2nd choice of buying external enclosures and then hard drives,
at the end it cost me much much less so i endded up buy another as a spare,
so currently using 4 NexStart combo enclosure each one fitted with a 500gb hard drive,
i got one connected to my G5 and 3 connected by FW400 to my imac through a daisy chain,
for time machines it doesnt matter about speed so you dont need to use up the FW800 Port,
FW400 will be fine,
before this i had a USB2 WD Book and was using that with time machine and never had a problem through USB,
i always connect to a port i hardly use as i wont ever need to keep taking it off if i had to connect my camera to it for example....

Partitioned external drive for Time Machine and Daily storage

Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive....need to have space available on the original drive on the MacBook....How do I move existing stored data and point ongoining saved music..files...etc to the new drive...???
Thank you...Bob

Yogabob wrote:
Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive
You could use an application like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to copy them to the new partition, but it's probably just as easy to drag the files/folders to the new partition, then delete the originals.
and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive
You probably don't really want to do that. Files you're using will be accessed much faster if they're on your internal HD.
Another consideration is, you really should have backups of the moved files somewhere, in case you have a problem with the new drive. Although TM will back them up unless you exclude that partition, if the drive fails, you'll lose both copies.

Multiple external drive problems, both USB and Esata

Everything worked well in Tiger on my first gen MBP. Since i switched to Leopard and now Snow, and a new UNI MBP in december 08 I have so many external drive issues.
USB drives just disappear and power off (from the system not electrical) for no reason, mostly when connected to USB hubs. I've tried various hubs including the powered ones. But as soon as i go over two USB devices in the provided ports my problems start.. It feels like not enough juice is getting through those ports on my MBP. I never have a problem if i just connect 2 devices into the MBP, but it's not enough (i have 5x1tb external drives).
Also the same with the express34 slot.. Everything was fine under Tiger and my old MBP, But now i get the grey wall of death so many times when connecting 2x esata 1TB drives. The system is so unstable with multiple drives both USB and. I'm currently working as a pro Photographer on assignment in Asia and these stability are starting to become a big problem.
God forbid i'm even considering a switch back to windows for reliability, (yes, i did use the words windows and reliability in the same sentence)
Does anybody else experience problems with multiple drives through leopard/snow leopard via Apple notebooks? I would love to hear some users experiences and hopefully find a solution to my problem.. In every other way the system works like a charm.
I will post in 2 forums because i'm not sure if software or hardware related.
Thanks, any help is appreciated.

@ Gregory
All my drives are 3.5" HD's all with external power cables along with a mains powered USB hub. Sorry, i didn't state that clearly in the original post (i thought the hint of all drives being 1TB was a dead giveaway:)).. However, this still doesn't explain the same behaviour of the 2x1TB esata drives which actually work well if no external USB drives are connected. Sorry i'm not technical but does the expresscard slot share any bridge,bus or power connectivity with the USB slots??
I'll try this SMC reset that S.U mentioned...
Thanks for everyones help and ideas so far.

External drive for iTunes library and backing up via time machine

Hi, I currently have an 320gb external drive plugged into usb port of my imac for time machine back up, but my itunes library is 500gb and currently excluded from time machine back up, I would like to buy a 2 or 3tb external drive and then move my itunes library to that to free space on my imac.
I'd really like to know the best way to set up and what to buy, ie, if i move the library to an external drive am I able to back up the external drive via time machine, plus I assume if I do this i need a second external drive or time capsule to back up the library
Also the external drive is plugged directly into imac but I have an airport extreme is there any benefit plugging the drive into this, would this mean you access file from network (should you do this if its used for time machine), should I get rid of the extreme and buy a time capsule
Thanks in advance

Hi, I'd recommend one of these...
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
FW400 will be faster than USB2, & FW8000 even better.
I see no advantage to plugging it into Your Extreme.

I need to change the storage hard drive for both lightroom and Photoshop from my C drive to F drive

How do I change my storage drive from C to F in both lightroom and photoshop as I am running out of space on my C drive?

Storage Drive ?? Photoshop. What Platform and OS are you running.
I use PC therefore Windows. When I thing about Application like Photoshop I know the are going to be files all over the place. Windows like everything installed on the Boot disk. I gave up the fight many years ago and let windows have it way when application are installed using an installer. However besides the application files you have user files and I break user files down into to categories. Windows User files like applications settings, preferences, cashes, etc and user Data Files, Images, text documents, PDF. Applications like Photoshop also have add-ons an need swap space as well. While all Windows default library reside on the C: drive you can add additional storage to you document, music, picture and video libraries the are not on the c: Most of my user data file are actually on external ESATA drives or USB3 drives. System files, Application Files, Paging, swapping and backup are on internal SSd and Fast Disk drive. Some of the folder that look like they are on C: are actually shortcut links to folders on other drives.

External Drive for both PC and G4

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